Treasure hunt: Geocaching friends log miles in outdoor game

Treasure hunt: Geocaching friends log miles in outdoor game

On May 2, 2000, U.S. officials flipped the switch (so to speak) on 24 satellites circling the globe, giving thousands of GPS receivers an instant upgrade. They envisioned ordinary folks would put this removal of “selective availability” to many uses.

But treasure hunting?

More precisely a treasure hunting game?

Called geocaching (that’s geo as in geography and caching as in hiding items), the real-world, outdoor game uses GPS-enabled devices. Participants navigate to a specific set of GPS coordinates and then attempt to find the container hidden at that location.

What started as a computer consultant’s lark has exploded in popularity. According to the official website, geocaching.com, there are now 2,290,161 active geocaches and over 6 million geocachers worldwide.

“Doctors, lawyers, retired people, stay-at-home moms, home schoolers, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, youth groups, 4-H, all kinds of people are involved in it,” says Mark Case. “It’s a way for people to visit the world without visiting the world.”

Case, along with friends Scott Hager and Christopher Hall, has ventured far and near in pursuit of the hobby, across the Mojave Desert, up Mt. Mitchell, down storm tunnels in Greensboro, through the caverns of Linville and the swamps of Hamlet, under bridges and on rivers, and to Area 51 in Nevada.

That’s where Case, a science teacher at Southern Guilford High School and Randleman resident, found his oddest find.

An alien rubber ducky.

He proudly displays it, amid a collection of other rubber duckies accumulated from various caches. From this, you glean that “treasure” in this game is broad in definition – and “cache” is not to be confused with “cash” although they’re pronounced the same. In fact, the thrill of geocaching seems to be the journey.

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“One of the most fun things about geocaching is being out with folks having fun,” explains Hager, a school social worker for the Randolph County School System who lives in Asheboro. “Exercising and going to incredibly pretty spots, meeting people along the way and having conversations with people.”

“You meet tons of people,” Case agrees. “It has something for everyone. Some are looking for time with the family. Other people want adventure, to see something different.”

As befits his handle of Ranger Fox, Hall has a more succinct reason for playing.

“I love to travel,” says the Greensboro web developer.

And travel he has, finding 44,700 caches in 23 states since 2006, a feat documented on the geocaching.com website which tracks everyone’s finds. In his trove are collectible toy Jeeps hidden as a promotion by the manufacturer that resulted in someone winning a real Jeep, and of course, geocoins. Designed by individuals or groups of geocachers, these special coins are like calling cards, each one assigned a unique tracking ID so its progress can be followed online.

Case, who started playing in 2010, has Hall beat at 37 states, but not as many caches (10,000). A relative newcomer, Hager has found 8,900 caches since 2009.

But he logged a thousand of those in one day.

In Nevada.

On the ET Highway.

(I’m not making this up.)

The former Route 375 runs through central and southern Nevada, from Crystal Springs to Warm Springs, with much of its alignment paralleling Nellis Air Force Range and the legendary “top-secret” government base there, a hot bed for UFO sightings. It’s also known as Area 51.

The highway has long drawn UFO aficionados, but with geocaching added to the mix, folks now come from all over the world to travel the road, look for flying saucers and unearth the more than 2,000 hidden caches. The phenomenon has revitalized the area’s economy, coining a new catchword, “geo tourism.” In Rachel, for example, the bar/restaurant/motel known as the Little A’Le’Inn (pronounced “alien”) now employs a year-round staff, instead of closing for the Winter.

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Often a geocaching expedition is intertwined with exploring the areas where “treasures” are hidden or combining it with another hobby. Case, ever “the geeky teacher,” put his trip to the Mojave Desert to good use.

“I brought a black light with me because I had heard scorpions glow in the dark with it,” and not being one to pass up a scientific experiment he tested the theory. “Sure enough. We found scorpions – and the black light made them glow!”

Another time, in Fayetteville outside Fort Bragg, he amazed fellow geocachers with his deductive prowess. Instead of starting from a marker, he took the information (wind speed, direction, height when dropped, mass of the object) supplied by the cache’s creator, a Camp Lejeune helicopter pilot, and calculated the container’s location to within three feet.

“It’s a matter of math,” he explains, nonchalantly. “It’s a matter of physics.”

Last April, Case and Hall were up for a challenge of a different kind. They became the first people to complete the Murphy to Manteo Challenge, which involves logging a geocache in Murphy and another one in Manteo within a 24-hour period. They celebrated the victory with a peach pie.

“And we called it, what?” Hall prompts his partner.

“The Thousand Mile Pie,” Case responds with a grin.

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On the flip side of geocaching, the friends are equally involved in creating experiences for their fellow players, hoping to lure travelers from great distances.

Hall concocts intricate multi-level caches in which people solve clues in each successive cache until they find the container. He’s also designed his own Travel Bug, a gnome named Cedrick whose “mission” is to travel to every point on a DeLorme downloadable map.

Case enjoys staging events. On a particularly-frigid Friday in January, with temperatures hovering around 20 degrees, he welcomed 17 brave souls to Deep River Park in Randleman “to meet, eat and have fun.”

The next Friday, Jan. 10 – the 10th anniversary of Earth Caches, a celebration of geosciences – they followed his coordinates of N 35° 52.926 W 079° 49.306 (that’s the Interstate 73-74 Level Cross exit) to hear a discussion of earth’s interaction with space and check out a collection of meteorites. One person came all the way from Manteo.

Case is also on the forefront of Geo Art, the latest craze in which caches are designed to create a design when seen on the geocaching.com map. There’s a train and plane in Idaho; a “HI” and smiley face off North Carolina 42 in Ramseur; and Case’s masterpiece, a five-pointed star in the Uwharrie National Forest.

“It took me nine trips and 30 hours of hiking to place all 52 caches that form a star,” Case says.

His is part of a group effort to create a star in each of the 50 states. They’re about halfway there, a goal that boggles the mind of this “muggle” (their word for a non-player).

As with any game, geocachers have their own vocabulary, culture and nicknames. Nearly everyone has a handle. Hager’s is Diefenbaker. Poor Case doesn’t have one, having signed up under his own name, not realizing he had the option.

Case says one reason the game is so popular is its versatility. It’s also cheap. All that’s needed is a GPS-enabled device, such as a mobile phone or a hand-held navigator like the Magellan eXplorist he prefers. In the end, it doesn’t really matter what you use.

All that matters is to be out there.

On the hunt.

On the road.

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Glossary of terms

Cache – A shortened version of the word geocache.

D/T – Geocaches are rated in two categories, each on a 5-point scale, with 1 being the easiest. Difficulty relates to the mental challenge of finding a cache; terrain describes the physical environment.

FTF – First to Find. An acronym written by geocachers in logbooks or online to denote being the first to the cache.

Geocoin – Often created as signature items by geocachers, they can also be used as collectibles and are trackable online as they go from cache to cache.

GPS – Global Positioning System, a system of satellites that works with a GPS receiver to determine your location on the planet.

Muggle – A non-geocacher. Based on “muggle” from the Harry Potter series, which means a non-magical person.

Signature Item – An item unique to a specific geocacher that is left behind in caches to signify that they visited that cache, including personal geocoins, tokens, pins, craft items or calling cards.

Travel Bug – A trackable tag that can be attached to an item, allowing geocachers to track their items online on geocaching.com, as it is carried from cache to cache (or person to person) in the real world.

Waypoint – A reference point for a physical location, defined by a set of coordinates such as longitude, latitude and sometimes altitude. Geocaching.com generates a unique “GC Code” associated with every geocache listing.